Lawyer Calls Sandusky’s Alleged Victim 2 a ‘Charlatan’

Mark Wilson/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — An attorney for one of the Penn State officials arrested in the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse case says that a man claiming to be Sandusky’s Victim 2 is a fraud and a “charlatan.”

The identity of the man called Victim 2 by prosecutors has remained a mystery throughout the trial of the former Penn State coach. According to prosecutors and the grand jury report, he is the boy whom Penn State assistant coach Mike McQueary saw being molested and possibly raped by Sandusky in a shower in 2001.

University officials Gary Schultz and Tim Curley were both charged criminally with failing to report that incident to authorities, though they both maintain that they did not know of a rape allegation from that night.

Schultz’s attorney released a statement Wednesday saying the man who has come forward claiming to be Victim 2 is not credible. He released the statement in response to a Harrisburg Patriot News story about Victim 2’s credibility.

“Discovery provided to us shows that the individual’s story changed from interview to interview and even conflicted with the version of events his own attorneys described,” attorney Tom Farrell wrote.

Judge John Cleland, who oversaw the case, will rule on the appeal. If Sandusky is denied an appeal, his case can go to appellate court. Sandusky’s attorneys are expected to argue they did not have enough time to prepare for trial and to prove that Sandusky’s victims were lying.

In Farrell’s statement, he accused Victim 2 of claiming first that he had never been sexually abused by Sandusky and then changing his story after becoming a client of attorney Andrew Shubin.

According to the statement released by Farrell, the man first came forward to prosecutors just days after Sandusky was arrested in November 2011, and said he was Victim 2. He said he was not abused in the shower the night McQueary saw him, or ever.

The man then changed his story and told investigators he had been abused, Farrell said. Farrell also claimed that when the man was asked to draw a diagram of the locker room in which he was allegedly raped, he failed to draw it accurately.

“When requested to diagram the Lasch building locker room and shower, the individual created a drawing that did not match reality,” Farrell wrote.

He pointed out that prosecutors had interviewed the man four times and decided not to put him on the stand in Sandusky’s trial.

Shubin’s law firm, Ross Feller Casey, LLP, released a statement Thursday standing by its client and criticizing Farrell’s claims.

“Conspicuously absent from Mr. Farrell’s statement is the fact that Jerry Sandusky himself, and his defense team, identified our client, and no one else on earth, as the boy who Mike McQueary saw in the shower with Jerry Sandusky,” the statement read. “The identity of the boy in the shower is not now nor has it ever been in doubt. The horrific abuse that he suffered both that day and on many other days will be the subject of a lawsuit that he files against Penn State.”

The statement said Victim 2’s initial denials of sexual abuse were commonplace for sexual abuse victims.

“While Mr. Farrell threw his lot in with Jerry Sandusky, he should think very carefully before he decides to publish any additional attacks on our client,” the statement read.

The individual has never made his identity public, but in July released audio recordings he claimed were Sandusky’s voicemails to him. The recordings included a man’s voice saying “I love you” to the person on the other end. He claimed that he had been abused before and after the 2001 incident by Sandusky.

“A court order prohibits the attorneys in the Sandusky case and in our case from revealing the identity of this individual,” Farrell wrote. “However, all the attorneys — defense lawyers and prosecutors — are aware of this individual’s identity and have evaluated his credibility, or lack thereof, appropriately, as evidenced by the fact that all parties to the Sandusky trial declined to call him as a witness.”

Schultz and Curley are both scheduled to be tried in January.

Sandusky, a former Penn State football coach, was convicted earlier this year of abusing 10 boys, and was sentenced last week to a minimum of 30 years in prison. For Sandusky, 68, that is a life term.

Sandusky’s defense team announced plans Thursday to appeal his convictions. Attorney Karl Rominger said that the motion to appeal would be filed by the end of the day.